Fifth Sunday in Lent, March 22, 2015 | 8:00 a.m.

The Real Tragedy

Victoria G. Curtiss
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 51:1–12
Matthew 26:14–16, 20–28, 47–50, 27:3–5

What matters is that we do not betray the spirit of divine gesture, that we accept its premise and its promise . . . and find in the death of Christ the ultimate expression of a love we can neither earn nor repay.

Erik Kolbell

Names that start with “J” have become popular in recent years. Babies are named Jennifer, Jessica, Jackie, Jocelyn, Justin, Jason, Jeremy, Jordan, and even Joachim. Still, nobody names their child Jezebel or Judas, two biblical characters that we only think of as bad. In fact, Judas has become synonymous with traitor, a person who betrays another.

If the biblical story around Judas was a movie, you’d realize right away you’re not supposed to like him. Judas is the bad guy, not to be trusted. And that’s all you know about him. He’s the fall guy. He gets all the blame.

The Gospel of John especially points a finger at Judas, portraying him as a thief. In John’s Gospel, Judas is the one who complained when money was spent on expensive perfume instead of on the poor and is accused of stealing from the disciples’ purse. Yet that seems unlikely. The most this little peasant band of followers would have had would have been a pittance, just grocery money. And it seems unlikely that Judas betrayed Jesus for the money, for his own profit. The thirty shekels Judas was paid for being a traitor was so paltry as to be insignificant.

Painting Judas as the evil one, the bad guy, is just too simplistic. He alone was not responsible for Jesus’ death. His personhood was more than the crime he committed. As Sister Helen Prejean, who authored Dead Man Walking, says, “A person is more than the worst thing he or she has ever done.” Judas was also a child of God. He was no doubt just as complex a person as any of us.

We really don’t know why Judas cooperated with the chief priests who wanted to kill Jesus. His motives are unclear. There are many theories. Was he a sane man suddenly gone mad? Probably not, because it was too premeditated, too carefully planned and executed with the Roman authorities.

Perhaps Judas’ initial enthusiasm as a follower of Jesus was unsettled by some of Jesus’ teachings and he increasingly saw himself as a failure, not strong enough to be a faithful disciple. Maybe Judas came to resent what he perceived was Jesus’ lack of respect for many points in the Jewish law or for keeping company with the wrong people. Perhaps Judas expected Jesus to overthrow the Roman rule of Israel. In his disillusionment, Judas betrayed Jesus because he loved his country and thought Jesus had failed it.

Or maybe there were positive reasons for his actions. Maybe Judas thought Jesus should be restrained until after the Passover when the crowds would have gone back home, because otherwise the unrest Jesus was causing would likely increase tensions with the Roman authorities. Or maybe he had gotten fed up with waiting for Jesus to take the world by storm and hoped betraying him might force him to show his hand at last. If he was the Messiah, could he not call on God’s power to save him? Then all doubt would have been cleared up and the nation would be won over to Jesus Christ.

Regardless of his motives, the early church portrayed Judas as a man of greed, of evil. Judas became the scapegoat. Pointing a finger is easier than living with shame. It is always easier to place all blame on one person than to acknowledge that all of us are guilty. All of us are capable of betraying another, and sometimes we have. Yet Judas alone is shoved off the stage while the rest of the disciples move on unscathed to the triumphs of Easter and Pentecost—even though there is the scene when all twelve disciples were seated together eating dinner with Jesus, and in the middle of the Last Supper, Jesus announces that one of them would betray him. “And they became greatly distressed and began to say to him one after another, ‘Surely not I, Lord?’” (Matthew 26:20–25). Surely not I, Lord? Judas said it, and so did all the others. They all must have sensed their own culpability. And in fact, later the scriptures say, “All the disciples left him and fled” (Matthew 26:56).

Still, Judas has become the scapegoat. Scapegoating Judas has had horrific consequences. Through the centuries, Holy Week has been marked by anti-Jewish hostility. In Europe in the Middle Ages there would be times on Good Friday when Christians got worked up with rage and went out and invaded Jewish communities to deface property, beat, and even kill Jews whom they identified as descendants of Judas, those alleged “Christ-killers.” Even though their targets had nothing to do with it. Even though Jesus was executed by the Roman method.

In different eras, various groups have been scapegoated. Church historian Diana Butler Bass spoke here last week about what happens when the social or religious order is shaken, when what used to provide meaning and stability no longer does. Some people keep journeying forward towards the unknown and the new. Others become threatened and try to hang onto or return to what they perceived were the glory days. In their anxiety, they scapegoat a group for why the world seems to be falling apart. We have scapegoated Jews, Catholics, Muslims, Palestinians, women, people of color, communists, LBGTQ folks, the poor, and immigrants. Blame is hung on “them.” All we can see in them is bad; all we feel is threat. Whenever we scapegoat, we not only falsely diminish our own guilt but unleash enmity toward others.

Poor scapegoated Judas. We don’t know why he betrayed Jesus. We do know that after his act of betrayal, he felt deep remorse. He tried to give back the money he was given. That was refused. He couldn’t live with himself for what he had done. He couldn’t live with his inability to make amends, to undo the immense harm he had done. He was so ravaged with guilt and shame that he committed suicide.

There is so much tragedy in this story. Christ’s death is a tragedy. It is always a tragedy when any innocent person is falsely accused. It is a tragedy when someone is imprisoned more for who they are than what they have done, as is true for many people of color incarcerated today in our country. It is a tragedy whenever people are persecuted, betrayed, injured, tortured, killed. Even when this happens to someone who is guilty, it is a tragedy.

It is a tragedy that innocent Jesus was crucified and died on the cross. It is also a tragedy that guilty Judas died. Two lives were lost. Jesus would not have wanted Judas to kill himself or face a death penalty. That would have broken Jesus’ heart. Jesus desired so much more for Judas, whom he called friend. Jesus did not seek retribution or revenge on any who plotted against him. He broke bread and shared the cup at the Last Supper, declaring that he gave his life for others out of love. He forgave them all their sins. And from the cross, he said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).

No one is beyond the reach of God’s redemptive power. But Judas didn’t realize that. He didn’t accept the forgiveness Jesus offered. He couldn’t forgive himself. His guilt and shame consumed him. He didn’t see himself as redeemable, as a beloved child of God, the way Jesus saw him. The real tragedy is that Judas cut off the very life Jesus sought to save.

We can understand why Judas missed the gift Jesus offered. It is hard to imagine that someone whom you have so deeply wronged could possibly love and forgive you. Forgiveness is not for wimps. It can be very difficult. One of our own choir and church members, Jeanne Bishop, recently authored an incredible book I recommend to you, called Change of Heart. It is her own true story of the challenging journey she traveled as a Christian to be able to forgive and make peace with the man who brutally killed her sister Nancy, her brother-in-law Richard, and their unborn child. She has developed a relationship with the killer and been a strong public advocate against the death penalty and against life sentencing for juveniles. This has cost her personally, since some others cannot tolerate that those who have committed murder would face anything other than a life sentence or the death penalty.

Jeanne’s heart was changed. A Christian friend asked her, “Wouldn’t it be amazing if God used you to bring this young man into relationship, if he joined you in heaven one day?” Jeanne remembers, “I felt my heart, hard and rigid, cracking open. I had always made a divide between Nancy’s killer and me. Him: bad murderer. Me: innocent victims’ family member. The truth was that we were the same; there was no division between us before God. We were both flawed and fallen. We were both God’s children. I could no longer draw a line between us that put me on one side and him on the other” (Jeanne Bishop, Change of Heart: Justice, Mercy, and Making Peace with My Sister’s Killer, p. 72).

In her book, Jeanne makes clear that it was God who called her to forgive and gave her the grace and strength to seek reconciliation with the one who killed her loved ones. God empowers us to show mercy. Jesus knew the way to peace was not through revenge. Revenge and retribution perpetuate violence. The only way to restore peace and break the cycle of violence is through mercy as part of justice.

Leaders in South Africa knew that with the ending of apartheid. They established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1995, led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Its purpose was to help the country begin to heal from the wounds inflicted on it over forty years of racial separation, persecution, and death. Of course, nothing could bring back the life of those who had died, nor erase all the nightmares. They could not return to a woman the years she lost in prison for a crime she did not commit, or fulfill for her children their inalienable right to be raised by their mother. But they could give voice to people’s sadness and anger. They could provide a platform for victims to be heard in the presence of their enemies. And they could also give the guilty an opportunity to confess their crimes, take responsibility for their actions, and repent their ways. People were held accountable, and penalties were meted out. Restitution, not retribution, was their motivating force. The aim of the proceedings was not to punish for revenge or punishment’s sake but to lay the foundation for a society in which all persons could live together as one nation.

At the beginning of the process, Archbishop Tutu said, “They tried to take our humanity away, but in the very process, by their behavior they stripped themselves of their humanity. The task of the commission must be to restore all of our humanity” (quoted in Eric Kolbell, Were You There, p. 56).

Our own church is about to engage in similar efforts on a smaller scale. Bobbie Huskey, one of our members who has worked in the criminal justice system for thirty years, has a vision of Fourth Church training Peace Builders to facilitate restorative justice. Restorative justice provides a means for those who have been harmed to express the impact the offense has had on their lives and community. It also provides a means for the offenders to take responsibility for their actions and make amends. Susan Stabile, another Christian friend of Jeanne Bishop who is also a lawyer and spiritual director, said, “Restorative justice is completely Christian. We recognize that we are all interrelated, interconnected. To me, at the end of the day, the banquet won’t be any fun—it won’t be complete—unless everyone is at the table. How do you bring people back to community? What happens when we put people in jail is we remove them from community. But do we get to make the judgment that these people are irredeemable?” (Jeanne Bishop, Change of Heart, p. 148).

Frederick Buechner has imagined a different ending to the story, after both Judas and Jesus have died: “Once again they meet in the shadows, the two old friends, Judas and Jesus, both of them a little worse for wear after all that had happened. Only this time it was Jesus who gave the kiss and this time it wasn’t the kiss of death that was given.”

Jesus gives us all a kiss of forgiveness. Jesus’ death was his complete, self-giving expression of love for us. Such love we can neither earn nor repay. But we can extend it by forgiving ourselves and one another. Do not add more tragedy to the story—forgive as Christ has forgiven you.